What horrible revulsions must have passed
Across that spirit in those few last hours!
What storms, that tore up life even to its roots!
Say what you will--grant all the guilt--and still
What pangs of dread remorse--what agonies
Of desperate repentance, all too late,
In that wild interval between the crime
And its last sad atonement!--life, the while,
Laden with horror all too great to bear,
And pressing madly on to death's abyss;
This was no common mind that thus could feel--
No vulgar villain sinning for reward!

_Was_ he a villain lost to sense of shame?
Ay, so say John and Peter and the rest;
And yet--and yet this tale that Lysias tells
Weighs with me more the more I ponder it;
For thus I put it: Either Judas was,
As John affirms, a villain and a thief,
A creature lost to shame and base at heart--
Or else, which is the view that Lysias takes,
He was a rash and visionary man
Whose faith was firm, who had no thought of crime,
But whom a terrible mistake drove mad.
Take but John's view, and all to me is blind.
Call him a villain who, with greed of gain,
For thirty silver pieces sold his Lord.
Does not the bribe seem all too small and mean?
He held the common purse, and, were he thief,
Had daily power to steal, and lay aside